Ashardalon’s Stride: Trail Blazer

Usable By: Artificer, Ranger, Sorcerer, Wizard

Spell Level: 3

School: Transmutation

Casting Time: 1 bonus action

Range: Self

Duration: Concentration, up to 1 minute

Components: V, S

The billowing flames of a dragon blast from your feet, granting you explosive speed. For the duration, your speed increases by 20 feet and moving doesn’t provoke opportunity attacks.

When you move within 5 feet of a creature or an object that isn’t being worn or carried, it takes 1d6 fire damage from your trail of heat. A creature or object can take this damage only once during a turn.

At Higher Levels. When you cast this spell using a spell slot of 4th level or higher, increase your speed by 5 feet for each spell slot level above 3rd. The spell deals an additional 1d6 fire damage for each slot level above 3rd.

Review by Sam West, Twitter: @CrierKobold

“Catch me if you can, zom-brats!” Eckle shouts, flames spitting up from her heels. The halfling bladesinger cuts through the undead lines, narrowly avoiding the flurry of rotten fists and jaws looking to rip her apart. Instead, the shambling dead receive a face full of flames, Eckle gleefully giggling as they burn up in her smoke trail.

Ashardolan’s Stride evokes spectacular imagery; your character goes so fast literal flames catch in their stride. Mechanically, this offers you a repeatable area of effect damage option so long as you keep moving alongside a giant bump in movement akin to getting a free dash each turn. On the right character in long enough fights with a wide open environment, this CAN be excellent. My main concern is the quantity of fights you’ll go into where this is actually all that applicable.

If you’re taking Ashardalon’s Stride, you’re going to want to be a character with at least a little bit of dedicated survivability. Even with the immunity to opportunity attacks, this spell takes your concentration and asks you to get up close and personal with enemies. If you’re getting as much damage as possible with this, you’re likely ending somewhere close enough to enemies that they’ll have no problem reaching you and hitting the crap out of you. You really don’t want to be spending your action to dash just to get extra damage on different creatures or to get to safety; 1d6 damage to a bunch of creatures each round isn’t really worth the 3rd level slot. You need to be spending your actions making attacks or casting other spells to justify the slot used here, as a lot of its power comes from it being “free” extra damage each round.

All of the usual “gish” character options between sorcerers and wizards fit this category; bladesingers, abjurer’s, war mages, and other frontline builds can usually expect to dedicate some amount of their features to maintaining concentration while getting attacked, and want to be spending actions making attack rolls or casting short range spells. Melee ranger builds may even consider picking this, because even though it comes in at 9th level, when paired with other ranger abilities and movement options, it can offer just a bit more damage and supplement the melee skirmish fantasy.

I don’t think Ashardalon’s Stride is going to be good on most characters that could take it; if your objective is to deal a bunch of fire damage to a bunch of creatures each round, Fireball is the exact same level. That being said, against larger creatures over a long fight while looking to conserve resources, there may be a tiny window where Ashardalon’s Stride is worth it. If you really want the bonus movement and freedom to go where you please, you probably can give this a shot. I have a hunch more often than not it’ll have too little of an impact to justify its slot, though.

5e Spells

Ashardalon’s Stride: Trail Blazer